Genie in a Bottle
by xLaramiex
Summary: Dempsey and Makepeace meet up for a drink.
1. Genie in a Bottle

_I think re-reading Krato's Symphoricarpus had a hand in this._

* * *

It was one of the rare occasions on which Spikings had given Dempsey and Makepeace separate assignments. Harry was stuck taking shifts on a long stakeout while Dempsey was in the middle of an undercover operation to flush out a human trafficking ring headed by a medium-rate politician, so they had barely exchanged a 'hello' in a week and a half. By switching shifts, Harry had found a night to meet up with Dempsey and go out. It wasn't ideal - she may have the luxury of the following morning to nurse a hangover, but Dempsey was due at work and so their designated driver - but it was better than nothing.

"It's just so boring, you know," Harry complained, leaning forward earnestly over their table, her upper-class accent more pronounced after the alcohol she had consumed. Dempsey had watched her enviously at first as he sipped at his beer, but soon found that the process of watching Harry get tipsy was almost as entertaining as getting plastered himself. "Sitting there for hours and hours watching this house with nobody in it."

"I have been on a stakeout before you know," he pointed out, wondering at what point 'tipsy' became 'drunk'.

"Isn't it boring?" Harry insisted, then suddenly switched. "I need a vodka and coke," she announced, standing up and disappearing to the bar to order her drink. Dempsey watched the other patrons while he waited. There was a beautiful woman with wavy brown hair not far away, eyeing him up as she swayed her hips to the music. He gave her an appreciative once-over but his eyes continued to travel around the room, to inevitably settle on Harry Makepeace, who just visible through the throng of bodies at the bar. She seemed to be downing a drink, her head tilted back to expose her neck. He forced himself to look away, determinedly turning his thoughts to the case and his gaze to the mass of people moving somehow together on the dancefloor.

Harry returned with her drink. "Hey, you," she said affectionately as she slid into her seat, making Dempsey grin.

"Hey, sexy," he replied, and to his delight she blushed. "Haven't seen you around here before," he teased, both hands firmly holding his pint.

"I'm Harriet Makepeace," she slurred slightly as she replied, playing along.

"Can I call you Harry?"

"Oh no, only my friends call me Harry. You and I hardly know each other."

Dempsey's heart started pounding, his mind racing as he wondered what would have happened if he had met Harry Makepeace on a night out rather than a day at work. She probably wouldn't have given him the time of day. But then, he knew how to be charming when he wanted to be. Maybe he would have been in with a chance after all.

But a chance for what? A night of passion, an awkward breakfast and an insincere promise (by either of them) to meet up again? Was that enough?

He looked into Harry's upturned, smiling face. No, he thought, it wasn't. He loved their history together.

"Jim Dempsey," he said, pretending to introduce himself. "Nice to meet you."

"We should dance," she announced, taking him by the hand and dragging him onto the dance floor. And god, her hand. Holding onto his firmly, assertively. He realised that, despite her growing drunkenness, she was very much in control in this situation.

When they were surrounded by dancers, she turned to face him. "So what do you do, Jim Dempsey?" she asked, carrying on the masquerade as they began to dance.

Dempsey missed the delicate weight of her hand in his. "I'm a cop." Anything else he might have said leaked out of his head when Harry slid her hand around his body to rest on his back, standing at an angle that meant he could feel the press of her hipbone and the shape of her breast against his side. He barely dared to breathe.

As she spun him about, her hand slipped upwards to clasp the back of his neck, and he found himself being pulled down towards her. And then - and then she was kissing him, open-mouthed and bold. A thrill ran through him, and her eyes were closed and he knew he couldn't kiss back but he let his lips part and Harry swiped her tongue decisively against his upper lip.

_Oh god, oh god..._

He broke the kiss and wrapped his arms around her, nestling his face into her neck. She was too drunk not to regret any of this in the morning, and he did not want to put himself through more than he had to.

Harry made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a pleasurable "mmm..."

"I wish you'd do that when you were sober," he admitted in a voice embarrassingly raw with open longing.

"God, me too," Harry said, almost too quiet to hear, touching dangerously low on his back.

Dempsey grinned. That was a confession he would hold onto.

"I'm gonna have to scoot soon," he said carefully, focusing his concentration away from the fingers reaching under his shirt and gently scratching across his skin. "Long day t'morrow."

"Mmm..." she murmured again, and he felt the vibration of her voice against his chest. "Are you asking me to go home with you, Mr Dempsey?" Harry asked playfully.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" she asked, letting go and stepping back. She suddenly seemed all-too serious. "Don't you like me?"

Dempsey instinctively moved back into her personal space. "Because we ain't doin' anything while you're drunk and I don't see why I should torture myself with starin' at ya."

* * *

Harry woke up in a strange bed. It was hard to pinpoint how she knew, it just felt different, smelt different. It smelt of aftershave.

When she moved, the hangover slammed into her. "Oh..." she moaned as the headache took hold with a vengeance. She took a moment to breathe slowly, and it was the sharp pang in her chest that reminded her that it was Dempsey's aftershave that she could smell. Ergo, she was in Dempsey's bed.

It took a monumental effort to turn her head enough to see that Dempsey was not in his bed with her._ Thank god._ She wasn't sure what had happened the night before but she would have been willing to bet money that she had pushed him in some way. With the way she was feeling about him lately, getting so drunk was monumentally stupid.

It was 11 o'clock. She had 4 hours until she had to be in work. Then she noticed the note, propped up on a glass of water and written in a messy mix of upper and lower case.

_"Gone to work. Breakfast in the kitchen. D. x_

_PS say hi to the genie for me."_

The genie? What was that about?

She drank the water and gingerly got herself out of (his) bed. After a visit to the bathroom she discovered the two bacon rolls on a plate, sitting on the kitchen counter. The unwashed frying pan in the sink told her he had made them himself - she must have been really out of it if the smell had not woken her up.

Harry sat down with her breakfast and contemplated the night before. She trusted him enough by now that her main concern was with whether she had embarrassed herself (in any case, the blanket crumpled on the sofa revealed where he had slept last night). The evening was little more than a hazy blur but she had the distinct impression that she had been somewhat...eager. She wondered at what point 'tipsy' became 'drunk', and how much of her behaviour could be excused. Hadn't she dragged him off to dance at some point?

Several coffees and a furtive nosy around his flat later, Harry was beginning to feel better; the headache had lessened to a dull throb, but the sound of the telephone still ripped through her brain painfully.

She picked up quickly, just to stop the noise. "Hello?" Her voice was slightly hoarse.

"Mornin', Princess," came Dempsey's too-cheerful voice. "How you feelin'?"

"Like a tank ran over me."

"Ha! That's my girl."

"Is there a reason you're destroying my peace and quiet?"

"Just makin' sure you're awake for your shift."

"How kind," she said ironically.

"And checkin' up on you," he added more gently.

"I'll live. I didn't make too much of a fool of myself last night, did I?" Harry had to ask.

"You were magnificent," Dempsey replied, and Harry wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic. There was a pause. "You spoke to that genie yet?"

"Yes, what was that about?"

"You don't remember?"

"Nothing about genies, no."

"They grant wishes, ya know."

"Three of them, I seem to recall. How is that relevant?"

Another hesitation. She could picture him with his mouth open, waiting for the words to come. "Just that, you did somethin' great last night and we both wished you'd do it again."

Harry started panicking silently. She had assumed the genie was a simple in-joke. "And what was that?"

"I think that's up to you to talk to the genie about," he said.

"Dempsey..." she began warningly, but he interrupted.

"Why don't you go back to my place tonight?"

"I'm on shift until 11."

"I'll wait," he said softly.

"Why?"

"You'll be closer to mine than yours."

"No, I meant -"

"I gotta go, Harry. See ya tonight, ha?"

"But -"

The phone cut out. She put it down slowly and frowned at it. Something they both wished she would do again? She shook her head, bemused. The bloody man was like a cryptic crossword.

Harry smiled. At least she had something to look forward to at the end of a long, cold stakeout.

* * *

_There's gonna be a second part to this soon but I'm not sure when. Seems I just can't stay away from this pair!_


	2. I Can Make Your Wish Come True

_Before we start, I want to address something that's come up a couple of times from different people on different stories of mine, and that is that people find it exceptional that Dempsey doesn't "take advantage" of Harry when she's drunk. But when someone's as drunk as I wrote Harry in the previous chapter, they can't consent. If someone can't consent and another person has sex with them, that is rape. By not trying it on with Harry when she's drunk, he is not being some sort of saint, he is meeting the minimum standard of human decency. It makes me very uncomfortable that we could think of people who simply refrain from raping as being some sort of special case. We have free will, and we are capable of exercising that will to not rape people._

_With that out of the way, on we go!_

* * *

Dempsey had had a very successful afternoon's work. They had finally managed to make their arrest, seizing two years worth of incriminating papers documenting the trafficking of people into the country to work as prostitutes or unpaid labourers. He got stuck at work writing up his report and started thinking about that evening. He was not sure if Harry would turn up - but he hoped, of course. A celebratory drink was definitely in order.

When he got home, he grabbed a beer and wandered around his apartment. Somehow it looked both sparse and untidy at the same time. He piled the washing up in the sink, shoved his dirty clothes in the basket and straightened the cushions on the sofa. He felt jittery for some reason, concious of how his flat would look to Harry's eyes. She had not been to his very much - they tended to end up in her larger house with the real fire.

He got bored halfway through wiping the kitchen counters and gave up on the cleaning spree, settling down with a film and a pie-and-chips instead.

He had not meant for Harry to stay at his last night - he had meant to take her home, put her to bed and leave her there. But somehow... somehow she had ended up following him a little shyly into the elevator in his building while he stuffed his hands determinedly in his jacket pockets.

* * *

Harry yawned and looked at her watch as she parked outside Dempsey's building. Her mind returned for the thousandth time that evening to their night out, and to James' note. What had she done?

Something tickled in the back of her conciousness but... no, surely.

She huffed in exasperation and knocked on Dempsey's door. One could not fake the slow smile and the softening of his eyes that occurred when her partner saw her, she thought.

"Hey, sexy," he said, stepping back to let her in. "Hard day at work?"

"Dempsey, if I do not have a cup of tea in my hand in the next five minutes someone is going to scream and I can't guarantee it will be me." She stared at him pointedly.

"I'm just gonna put the kettle on." He left Harry taking her coat off to do just that. Harry was surprised that he bypassed the innuendo he could have got out of her statement. "We got our guy this afternoon," Dempsey called from the kitchen. Harry could hear the rush of water, the click of the kettle being turned on and the clink of mugs.

"Your politician?" she asked, as Dempsey came to lean against the door frame.

Dempsey raised his voice slightly as the kettle began to roar and bubble. "Yup. I don't think he'll be doing that for a while, though. I take it the stakeout was a bust?"

"The most exciting thing that happened in the entire eight hours I was there was that a bird nearly flew into the windscreen, but didn't."

"So what, you think this couple might be kosher after all?"

"I don't know, really."

The kettle clicked off and Dempsey went to fetch their teas, returning to sit beside her on the sofa, resting his feet on the table. Harry drank her tea quickly, basking in the lovely warm feeling spreading through her. Tea, she thought, was wonderful, as was sitting quietly with Dempsey after a long day.

They set their empty cups on the table and as they sat back up it felt natural for Harry to lean into him. Their bodies met from their knees to their shoulders.

A jolt of heat shot through Harry's body as a memory finally surfaced. Dancing with James - dancing close. And then... Had she really...?

She gathered all her courage. "James, did we...kiss...at any point, last night?"

For a moment, as he looked at her impassively, she thought he wouldn't answer, but then he nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"Oh." She struggled to call the vision to mind, but there was only a hazy recollection of pulling him down towards her.

"That a bad thing?" he asked, not meeting her eyes. He looked almost disappointed.

"I don't even remember it."

He looked up quickly to search her face. "That's the worst bit about it?"

Harry fixed her gaze on her knees and prayed that the heat in her face would go away. How could she answer that? Dempsey just smiled.

"That's where the genie came in," he prompted quietly after a moment, nudging her gently with the elbow already pressed against her side.

"And something I did that...we both wished we'd do again?" Harry guessed breathlessly, every nerve singing.

"Last night you did."

"Maybe I still do," she admitted.

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then Dempsey turned, laid a hand on her knee, and said, "You're the genie here, Harry. You know what I want. It's up to you."

Harry felt paralysed, sitting on her partner's sofa and staring at his earnest expression. She knew what she wanted, but acting on that was another matter. "The genie would like a little help," she said at last.

Dempsey closed the distance between them and pressed his lips to hers in a gentle kiss. Harry felt like she was flying. She brought up a hand to cup his cheek as they moved their lips against each other lightly. Dempsey kept pulling back slightly, teasing her, making her lean further forward unconsciously.

Abruptly, Harry pulled away, still holding his face with one hand. "Actually, Dempsey, you're wrong, I haven't a clue what you want," she said fiercely.

Dempsey smiled lazily, his dilated pupils framed by the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. "More of that would be great for a start."

Harry was filled with a disappointed anger, flinching away from him. "So you're just after -"

Dempsey interrupted the potential tirade. "No, Harry, I said for a start. Then I want... Harry, I just want you. I wanna be around you. I wanna...be with you." He grinned mischievously. "But I'm not denyin' I spend quite a lot o' time wantin' to kiss you."

Harry searched his eyes for the truth of his words. "I think the genie approves of that plan," she said carefully. "And...I do too."

"Then let's make a start."

Without another word, Harry smiled, and kissed him deeply.

* * *

_I wasn't really intending to get them together when I started but the whole premise seemed to be leading to that point so here we go. Reviews are lovely, if you get a moment. Thank you to the guests I've had for their reviews on the previous chapter._


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